Fragments of the Past
by Parallax Occlusion Mapping
Summary: The past always had a way of clinging onto the present, affecting things that shouldn't be affected anymore. When a lone remnant of a past long gone comes back to the surface, will he be able to survive in the new reality, or will it destroy him? Or will he realize the past never was gone, it only began to exist in a different way?


**Inspired by "The Beast of Yesterday," a Zootopia Fanfic by Tremainj.**

 **I don't own IC.**

C:\Users\Admin run

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Task Completed in: 15ms

Welcome to the Cryogenic Freezing Control Center!

Please enter your username and password:

parallax

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Signing in...

Completed!

Select a cell to manage:

Cell 1: BREACHED

Cell 2: BREACHED

Cell 3: GOOD

Cell 4: OFFLINE

Cell 5: OFFLINE

3

Time Since last offline: 1602802y 56d 4h 23m 51s

Cell 3 Status:

Breach status: **GOOD**

Life support: **GOOD**

Health: **GOOD**

Oxygen Levels: **78%**

Food Levels: **77%**

Power Level: **99%**

Est. remaining containment time: 2600285y 69d 3h 1m 0s

 **[OPEN]** **[DISCONNECT]**

OPEN

Open cell? y/n

y

Opening Cell:

11%

56%

100%

Task Completed in: 2ms

Waking Organism

100%

Task Completed in: 0ms

Transferring Memories

45%

99%

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Task Completed in: 1ms

Cell Opening Complete!

Exit? y/n

y

Exiting.

Thank you for using Cryogenic Freezing Control Center, a product by NoxOS Long Term Storage, a subdivision of Noxious Industries!

Have a great day!

C:\Users\Admin shutdown

Shutdown? y/n

C:\Users\Admin y

Shutting down terminal...

Something had woken him up.

He was going to kill whatever had woken him up. He was sleeping, all cool and good, until that _thing_ just had to come and wake him from his sleep.

Why would it even want to wake him? He didn't do anything, All he wanted to do was sleep. He tried to sleep again, but then something pricked him. Why would it prick him? He hadn't attacked it, or done anything. He just wanted to go back to-

Wait...

It was almost as if a blind had been lifted from in front of him. He could remember everything now. Nothing was hidden from his view. He remembered his name, Ermac. He remembered how he got here. And most importantly, he remembered he was the last.

He was on some sort of platform, covered with padded material. And deep cold, chilling him to his bones, surrounded him. It permeated deep into his skin, an inescapable coolness.

Ermac open his eyes to see where he was lying. Gray padded walls surrounded him. In front of him was a thick steel door that had opened. The door had a window in it made of glass.

He picked up his arms, and reached forward, grasping the doorframe. A completely light gray hand appeared, and it grabbed the door frame. His hand had a strange shimmering quality to it, as if it was inlaid with very small pieces of reflective material. Another hand appeared, grabbing the door frame. He pulled his body out of the cell he was in. He sat on the edge of his cell, his bare feet hovering over the ground. The cold immediately disappeared.

Looking around him, he saw a large circular room. The walls were made of a dark gray and completely smooth material. The floor and ceiling were made of the same material. Next to him stood 4 other cells like his.

Two of them had completely shattered windows, and were dented. Whatever was inside was long dead by now. The two others had no visible damage, yet did not seem to be working. Nothing in them must be alive, as well.

He walked forward towards a circular doorway on the opposite side of the room. As he neared it, it came to life and slid open noiselessly. Ermac walked through the doorway to find himself in a large space, mostly empty except for a desk at the other side with a lot of control panels on it. A large screen was mounted in front of it. The walls were made of a brushed metal, with medium sized cavities in the wall which led to a glass window.

Ermac walked to one the four windows in the room, and looked through them. Outside lay a large black expanse, dotted with pinpoints of light. _Space,_ thought Ermac. The expanse was interrupted only by a smooth blue sphere, the size of a marble. _This is Earth_ , he thought regretfully, _a place that gave us life, but was the reason for much death._

Earth was what had brought him here, the last of his race. It had killed everyone and everything he knew. Not Earth itself, but it's value. The Last War, as he called it. Everyone had been fighting for the last of the planets resources.

Why, he did not know. They could have just rather gone to other planets and mined on them, rather than cause conflict between the four nations of humanity. All he knew was he had overheard one of his leaders plan to take over another nation, a foolish venture. Tensions were high at that time, and a single wrong move would have caused a war. That attack was the wrong move.

Ermac, immediately after he heard that, had deserted the training facility he was housed in. He stole some weapons, and took a small spacecraft to a distant, but heavily armed military outpost. There, he had fought through and killed almost everyone in the outpost, and taken it over. He was in that outpost right now.

After taking over the outpost, he watched the planetary TV feeds as it destroyed itself, completely killing everyone on the planet. Very few humans, if any, remained. This outpost was one of the two outposts capable of surviving the blast. Some parts still got damaged, like the other 4 cryogenic chambers. He had put a timer to wake him up from the deep sleep once the radiation from the blast would have gotten low enough for human survival. It finally had, after millions of years, and now he could go back.

Snapping back to the present, Ermac took in the base. There was always the escape pod, which could get him to Earth, but not back. He would need some sort of freighter, so he could bring a land vehicle with him to quickly traverse the terrain.

He would take the heavy combat spacecraft, which was designed to carry armored vehicles from planets and back. In that craft, he would store a light tank designed for anti-personnel and anti-air uses. It had 4 heavy machine guns, designed to rip through the fuselages of aircraft. With that, he would take some high-density food pills, which were designed to replace a whole day of meals. He would also need some armor for his person. For that, Ermac would wear one of the newer, prototype armor suits designed for high speed flight in space and in environments with gravity. They had a very large auxiliary power output as well, so he could hook up a high power multitool or some heavy weaponry to it.

Now, all he had to do was find what he needed. The spacecraft and tank was easy enough, it's not like you can hide a large spacecraft. He the tank onto the spacecraft and then started searching for the food pills and the armor suits. The food pills were found in the kitchen. To find the armor suits, he had to search for a while until he found a hidden doorway, leading into a room full of the suits. He put on the highest rated on, and turned it on.

A small light turned on, indicating that the suit was online. The suit stood there for a few seconds, calibrating itself, the opened its front. Ermac stepped into the suit, and then it closed over his head and sealed itself. The suit was strangely comfortable from the inside.

Ermac walked around, getting used to the suit. It wasn't very hard, but it was still strange to move in. Once he got used to it, he walked to his spacecraft and got into the seat. In front of him opened a large dome shaped window, looking straight forward. He decoupled from the outpost, and fired some RCS thrusters, slowly drifting away. Taking one last look behind him at his home for the past millions of years, he sped forward towards earth.

A few hours later, he was nearing Earth's atmosphere. He would have to choose somewhere to land. It would have to hidden somewhere, or at the very least protected by some natural landforms. A plain surrounded by mountains, or a valley would be perfect. It would also have to be large enough to house him and his spacecraft safely.

Ermac tapped the console a couple of times and sent of a planetary scan. It wasn't very thorough, just a simple scan to figure out the lands general shape. After a minute, the results appeared. Just as he thought, most continents had shifted, creating a completely different landscape from what he was used to. However, some of the readings were very strange. One of them reported a floating chunk of land, which seemed to interfere with scan and let out energy. Some radiation still existed throughout the planet, but it was very little.

He switched over to the organic lifeforms section of the report. A lot of the original animals had survived, such as squirrels, bears, and the like. There were no humans. However, Ermac remembered that this device only scanned for already known organisms. If any new intelligent organisms had evolved, or mutated, it would not detect them. He would have to go down to the planet himself to check.

Ermac decided to land on the floating island. It gave of interference and would block any attempts to spy on him. He set the ship computer to automatically perform the landing, and strapped himself in. The ship performed a reentry burn, lowering their orbital velocity till they would enter the atmosphere soon. It did soon enough, and they started to heat up. After a two or three minutes of reentry heat, they were slowly flying at a high altitude. The ship flew towards the location of the floating island in the distance. He could not see an island however. As it got closer to the alleged location, navigation instruments started to send strange readings. However, the ship kept flying. Suddenly, the ship passed through a field of some sort, and the island appeared in front of them. The island was invisible. Once they got near the island, they slowly drifted down until the ship touched the ground. As soon as it hit the ground, the instruments came back to normal.

 _Strange_ , thought Ermac. The interference was one way. Things outside could not access, or even see the inside, but everything inside could watch the outside. Now that he was on the planet, he could do a more in-depth local scan, which would give him a lot more details about his location. The results for it came back in a few minutes. Very little of anything existed around him. It was just a large, empty map of nothingness. The landscape was mostly desert around him, with nothing to interrupted it.

 _Just a random invisible floating chunk of rock, in the middle of a flat plane,_ thought Ermac humorously. Very little plant life managed to survive in this desert. However, large amounts of plant life thrived on the island. It was almost as if the island had been made into an oasis of some sorts. But where would the energy to sustain it come from. The most likely answer was whatever that was generating the field around the island. However, it could be something else. He couldn't be sure.

Ermac got out of his ship and started exploring the area around him. He had landed in a small clearing, surrounded by large amounts of trees and foliage. Much of it was foreign, or very different from what it originally was. He would have to tread carefully in this place. Nothing he knew applied to these plants anymore (and possibly animals).

Ermac walked towards the edge of the clearing, noticing the exotic beauty of the forest next to him. Beyond him were slender trees with sunlight filtering through their leaves, casting volumetric beams of light through an otherwise dark space. The shafts created patches of brightness on the ground, surrounded with shadow. Dust floated through the air, glowing as light struck it. The ground was covered with dirt and almost no grass. Rocks of various shapes and sizes stuck out of the ground between the trees, seemingly growing straight from the ground. It created a picture of exotic beauty.

Yet for its beauty, the forest emanated a feeling of darkness. Beneath the calm interior, it was unnatural. No sound came from it. Any sort of nature should be creating at least some sort of noise, yet this one did not. You could not even hear wind flowing between the trees. Everything that resided in the forest, if anything did in the first place, was incredibly dangerous. He would have to go into the forest with much caution.

And thus, Ermac grabbed a rifle and crept into the forest silently. He walked forward, his footsteps padded by the dirt. He vigilantly scanned his area, looking for any sort of threat. None existed right now, but that could quickly change.

And so, he padded on through the forest, exploring and storing images and data about the forest in his suit's memory. It was a while before something interesting happened.

Ermac crept through the forest, just as he had been doing for the past hours. The sun had long since sunk below the horizon, and now he crept through darkness. His eyes, capable of seeing in the dark because of modifications, still scanned the area around him. His suit had also activated infrared cameras mounted on the helmet. Their feed was shown in a small thumbnail video on his HUD. It would be useful for seeing animals before they saw him. Unless, of course, they were some sort of cold-blooded creature.

Right then, he saw something happen. In the corner of his vision, something dashed in a small blur of motion. It gave of heat, thankfully. He could track it much easier now. Ermac spun around, the suit's HUD generating a small box and crosshair over the heat signature. It had stopped moving, and was staring at him.

The creature itself was small and reptilian looking. It had two very small wings sticking out from its back. The white scales covering what looked like a dragon flexed as it moved towards him. Ermac shuddered as he felt something intrude on his mind. It was like a small pressure touching his mind, wanting to be let in. However, Ermac's training kicked in. He isolated his mind from everything and anything around him.

What was strange about this however, was that the dragon was even capable of doing this. Mind assaulting had been a very hard skill to obtain in his time. Very few people were capable of this, and yet, here was a mere animal being able to.

 _No, not an animal¸_ Ermac thought. _No dumb creature would be able to do this. It must be intelligent._

The dragon suddenly ran back into the trees. Ermac stared after it, and then held out his gun. The only reason an animal would do this is if something much more powerful than it was approaching. And knowing that the dragon was intelligent, he had no doubt that the threat was real.

Thud. Thud.

Ermac spun around to face the noise coming from behind him. There was nothing at first except two slightly thicker trees than the ones around them. But in the few seconds, after following them upwards with his eyes, he saw what the little dragon had thought a threat. Or more accurately, protection.

Towering over him, stood a large dragon, covered in dark blue scales. Its head lowered to look at him. Ermac stared at the head, and then chose what he thought was the best choice. He slammed into the mind of the dragon, forcing past the defenses of its mind. As soon as he was past the initial defense, a deep voice echoed through the mind.

 _STOP._ Ermac paused, and then replied.

 _I mean you no harm. I was exploring and I came across the child. If you allow me to go, I will not willingly bother you anymore,_ he explained placatingly. Immediately, a feeling of anger blasted through the link.

 _WHY WOULD I LET YOU GO? You have breached my sanctuary and I will not allow that to happen willingly,_ roared the dragon, and then said in quieter tones.

 _Whether I leave will not be determined by you,_ challenged Ermac, _I would rather have as less as violence as possible._ With that, he exited from the dragon's mind and walked away slowly. The dragon stared after him, and then walked away into the trees.

Ermac sat down next to his ship the next morning deep in thought.

 _Dragons exist? They are intelligent as well. The radiation had changed many things. There will be creatures similar and stronger even. I will have to watch out._ Ermac got up and looked around. Today he would leave this island, and fly around in his suit, looking for other life.

He turned on the flight systems on his suit, which came to life with a quiet hum, before fading into a slight vibration. Two seconds later, he levitated into the air. Leaning forward, Ermac floated forward slowly. His fingers twitched, and the suit zoomed into the air, carrying him with him. Once he got to a decent altitude, he accelerated forward, slowly leaning till he was completely flat in the air. He soon was flying at an incredibly fast speed above the sparse desert. Using the data from his last local scan, he angled towards the place he was most likely to find creatures: near water and resources

North of him was a very large forest. To his south there were some very large mountains. There also seemed to be some sort of settlements to his west. He didn't know whether they were abandoned ones from his time, or complete new ones. Both were equally likely to be true. To his east was another one of the settlements, with some small bodies of water. Past that was empty plains with nothing outstanding on them. Ermac angled to the southwest. He was targeting a large landmark, somewhat like a miniature plateau. It had one of the settlements he had seen before next to it. He would bypass some of the closer ones, because they were much larger on the scan than the other ones. If they happened to be inhabited, it would be better for him if there were less creatures there.

The suit went even faster, approaching about Mach 4. He would reach the settlement in about 15 minutes.

 **[a/n] Nerdy Stuff, skip if you want to - assuming that it took Eragon and Murtagh about 5 days to cross the desert at full speed, I compensated and said it takes an average of 1 week to cross the desert. If you rode a horse for 10 hours a day, it would take 70 hours of riding to cross it. A horse's average speed is 20 mph at full gallop, so the desert is about 70*20=1400 miles across. Mach 4 is about 3000 mph, which would mean it takes Ermac 3000/1400=about 30 minutes to cross the whole desert. Ermac is about 2/3 of the way to the left and 2/3 of the way down on the area of the desert (using the map on the wikia as a reference) it would take him about 10-20 minutes to reach Dras-Leona. [a/n]**

The shape of the plateau slowly rose up above the horizon as he approached it. Ermac toggled on the cloaking system on his suit, preventing anything from seeing him. He touched down a minutes' walk away from the settlement. It was very much inhabited, from what he could see, and with humans no less. They appeared to be preparing for an invasion of some kind, with archers lined up on the walls of the city. A bit over from the city gathered the invading army. Both were armed with medieval weaponry, ranging from swords and bows for the infantry to large battering rams for taking down doors.

Ermac stared at them, and then turned around to leave. It would be best to not interfere with these people. They appeared to be from the ages of kings and queens, and would likely have the same misconceptions about the unknown. He would have no problem fighting out from them, but however it would be best to not kill as few as people as he could. They could be allies in the future.

And with that, Ermac lifted off the ground and flew back to his island. He had yet another mystery to solve: where the island got the energy to suspend itself in air and allow the flora on it to flourish.

 **:thinking: how bad was it? And yeah, got the name for Ermac straight from Mortal Kombat X**


End file.
